Cobwebs
by attackfishscales
Summary: When Mai was six years old, she went away to school and met Ty Lee. When she was seven, she met Azula.


**Author's Note:** Written for All-peristeronic on Tumblr as a reward for donating fifteen dollars to RAICES, a charity that aids immigrants and refugees coming to the US and are fighting Trump's crimes against humanity. They wanted a fic about Mai and Ty Lee as girls at school, coming to grips with the terrifying reality of being Azula's favorites and becoming the people who truly understand each other in the face of severe isolation.

* * *

Cobwebs

It was barely noon, and Mai was already bored. There was a lot else she was feeling, in a mixed up, jumbled mess, but boredom was the one she had a name for, so that was the name she used. Tucked up against the wall under the eaves, she watched a spider-fly weaving its web, moving in spirals outward from the center.

"What are you doing?" The same stick-like teacher wo had told her she was holding her brush all wrong, and would never become a calligrapher, loomed over her. "You should be in the dining hall or playing on the field, get out. Shoo."

Mai jumped to her feet, scowling furiously as she stomped off. Where she was going, she didn't know. The dining hall was out. It was too loud. And the field made her feel like a bug on the floor when someone opened a window and let the light in.

"Oh hi!"

Mai ignored it.

The girl who had called out to her broke away from a small gaggle of other girls. "You're Mai, right? The girl who who doesn't have a roommate?"

Mai nodded suspiciously.

"Oh, that stinks! You must be so lonely."

"Not-"

Another girl scoffed. "I think she's lucky. She gets a whole room to herself. It's not fair."

"I don't know," the first girl said, wide eyed. "I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't have somebody to keep me company."

"Ugh." Fortunately Mai had never had that problem. "Shut up and leave me alone."

As she stormed away, she heard one of the girls say to the others, "Wow, it's a good thing she doesn't have a roommate. Who'd want to be stuck with _her?"_

Her face burned. Fine. She didn't want anything to do with them either.

o0O0o

The school hadn't improved any over the break, and her second first day was already just as bad as the first, and she hadn't even had her first class. She pulled her knees in close to her chest and peered around the edge of her little alcove. Once she felt sure no one was coming, she sank down against the wall and ran her hand over the surface of the wood. The alcove was empty except for a dragon statue and the spider-flies and cricket-moths that kept everybody else away, and that was just the way she liked it. Once, she had actually watched a spider-fly catch a cricket-moth, snare it in silk, and bite in for the kill. She wrote her end of the year poem about it, which was why when it was time to read them in front of the school, she didn't get to.

A shadow fell over her alcove. "You again?"

Mai glowered.

Mistress Naki, the calligraphy teacher, wagged her long, boney finger. "Always sneaking around somewhere you shouldn't be. Get out of here."

With as much dignity as she could muster, Mai rose to her feet and brushed past her. There was a cobweb stuck to her hand. She made sure it got snagged on the calligraphy teacher's nice silk robe instead.

As Mistress Naki swooped off to harass someone else, a girl, one of the first years that Mai got to be older than now that she wasn't at the bottom of the heap, sauntered over. "You should just ignore that old coot. You got there first. She doesn't get to make you leave."

"She's a teacher," Mai said flatly, picking the last bits of web off her fingers. "Get used to it. They're always telling you what to do."

"Nobody tells me what to do." The girl smirked. "I'm the princess."

"Oh?" Mai snorted, incredulous. There was nothing special about her, not like a princess would be. "Which one?"

"There's only two of us, stupid, and the other one's my mother." She shot Mai a contemptuous look. "She's not a _real_ princess anyway. She's just a princess because she's married to my father. I'm a princess all on my own."

"Doesn't that mean you're only a princess because of your dad too?" Mai asked before she could stop herself.

The princess, and Mai was suddenly very worried she was telling the truth about that, went white, trembling with rage. Mai thought she was going to hit her. But she didn't. "What do you know about it?"

Mai stared at the ground. "Nothing."

o0O0o

Bewildered, Mai clutched her new room assignment in her hand. The doors all looked the same except for the bronze number characters nailed to the door frames, and unlike some girls, she never flitted from room to room in the evenings after class to gossip. It took her two trips down the corridor before she spotted the right one. She shoved it open furiously.

Her roommate was already there in pink sleep clothes, with her long braid loosened for the night. It was the same obnoxious girl who on their very first day had mocked her for being lonely.

"Don't worry," Mai snapped. "I'll fix this. It's got to be a mistake. You won't be stuck with me for long."

"I don't think that's going to work," the other girl said softly. "I'm pretty sure it's not a mistake."

Mai resolved to ignore her, dragging off her uniform, and wrapping her bun caps around her hair buns. Her own sleep clothes were dark and sensible, not little girly.

The door slid open again, and both girls jumped. The princess stood in the doorway with a smile plastered on her face. "Oh good, you're both here."

"Where else would we be?"

"I don't know, Mai," she said unsettlingly. "Aren't you the one whose always sneaking around where you're not supposed to be?"

"Did you have us put together?" the other girl asked tremulously.

"Of course." Her smile had gotten smaller and smugger, and Mai didn't like it any better than the other one. "Some second year girl had to share with a first year, and nobody wanted it to be Mai."

"I thought there was an even number of first years this year," the pink girl said.

"There was, Ty Lee, but I'm a princess. I don't share. Besides," she said coldly. "You're going to be my friends. It's just convenient if you're both in the same place.

o0O0o

"I don't like you playing with her."

"But Azula," Ty Lee began, somehow managing to sound both patient and worried at the same time. Mai was impressed. "Aika's my friend. We spent all of last _year_ together."

"Fine." Azula seemed to fill the room. Mai knew she was younger and smaller than either of them, but when she was there with them, Mai couldn't make herself believe it.

Mai's eyes flicked up to Azula, hidden behind her bangs. She swallowed back her shiver and clenched her hands to keep them still.

"Fine. She's your friend. I won't stand in your way." Azula gritted her teeth. "I hope you have fun together."

o0O0o

Somehow, Mai wasn't even a little surprised when Aika was sent home three days later in disgrace after a minor mistake in music class. When she went back to her room after class, Ty Lee was already there on her bed, knees tucked up under her chin, crying.

Ty Lee looked up at her, tears pouring down her face. "It's my fault."

"It's Azula's fault," Mai retorted. "She did it to hurt you. That doesn't make it your fault."

"I should have just said okay to her, and stopped talking to Aika," she whispered. "Then at least she would still get to go to school with us."

"Maybe." Mai sat down next to her on the bed. "But she probably would have done it anyway."

"Maybe." Ty Lee swallowed. "What's she going to do when she finds out I've got a bunch of sisters at home?"

"Maybe she won't care. Maybe she only cares if it's at school." But neither of them believed that.

Ty Lee didn't answer. She hunched in on herself instead.

Mai put her arm around Ty Lee, and let her sink in against her. They stayed there, still and pressed together as the oil lamp flickered on the table between the beds. Mai gripped Ty Lee's shoulder tight and stared at the wall. The shadows shifted with each flicker of the lamp's flame. There was a cobweb, tangled up in the corner, where the ceiling met the wall. The flickers snarled the shadows it cast still further, leaving clumps of darkness, and jagged holes where the light broke through.

"If you want, I can stay here tonight," Mai told her. "I'll get up early tomorrow and get into my own bed, and nobody will ever have to know."

"Okay," Ty Lee said, her voice small.

Mai pulled the blankets up around them and snuffed the oil lamp, plunging them both into darkness. Only the thinnest slivers of light peaked through between the window shutters as Mai held Ty Lee and listened to her breath go slow and steady with sleep.


End file.
